Times of Crisis
by Lafayette1777
Summary: Park was a rock. She could be counted on, and she was impossible to break. Maybe that's why Chase thought she was weird. Maybe that's why he was wrong. Chase/Park.
1. Nobody's Fault

She had been standing in the doorway for what seemed like less than ten seconds before he opened his eyes.

She didn't say anything, just moved from her perch on the threshold toward his bed. He looked at the clock on his bedside table—10:42 pm—and then back to her.

"What are you doing here so late?"

Chi Park shrugged.

"Just got off working the ICU. Figured I'd see how you were doing before I went home." She moved his rode aside, and saw his bandage needed changing. After stretching a pair of gloves over her small hands, she snatched the old dressing off quickly, like a band-aid, and inspected Taub's neat line of stitches, still red and angry, but healing. She found the necessary gauze and tape and replaced the bandage before he could say anything.

"So," Park said, unaware of what might have been a taste of awkwardness in the air. "How are you?"

"Oh, I've been better." Robert Chase replied, with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Better than most stab victims."

"Are you going to quit?" She asked bluntly.

He hesitated, then shrugged. "Depends if I'm gonna be in a wheel chair for the rest of my life."

She looked at his immobilized feet then, as if remembering the more pressing issue, and then took two quick steps to the end of his bed. She peeled back the sheets with a flick of her wrist, exposing his legs up to the mid calf.

"Close your eyes." She commanded, and he did as he was told.

Park pressed a gloved finger against each toe, and then along his feet and ankles. She tried the end of her pen, too, but that solicited no response either.

"Anything?" She asked after a while.

He opened his eyes. "Nothing." He replied, a shake to his voice.

"It's early." She did her best to reassure. "Without a doubt it's a clot. No need to start worrying yet."

His eyes were glassy. She got a feeling she was catching a glimpse of a younger Chase, the "shiny-haired wombat". Perhaps a more vulnerable man, knowing of the hardships of family but nothing of heartbreak. She got the feeling he was more cheerful back then. Less damaged.

"No need to worry." She repeated, heading for the door.

"Wait." He said softly. "Don't leave quite yet."

He offered no explanation, but she understood. Human contact is a necessity in times of personal crisis, she thought. And this hospital must be awfully lonely at night, when you have nothing to do and nowhere to go.

She moved back toward him and settled into the seat next to his bed. She took his outstretched hand softly. She could at least stay with him till he slept.

Neither said a word.

**Author's Note: Okay, so that's the first chapter. This is a multi chapter story that will be mostly in the post finale timeline. I just wanted to begin with this one-shot. Anyway, please review! Thanks for reading!**


	2. Constants and Variables

_6 months later:_

The head of the department of diagnostics at the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital settled into his desk chair.

Mid morning sunlight was entering the glass walled office, lighting up the stacks of files on the part of the desk that faced outward. On the left side, several well placed objects were still untouched; a small, colored stress ball was among them, as well as a pair of running shoes, discarded on the floor, and an ID badge with a stubbled face glaring out from the corner.

Robert Chase didn't move these objects. He could hardly touch them without remembering. Some good, some bad.

The door had his name on it, but it was not his office. It was House's, and it always would be. It's hard to think about sometimes. Ten years, he spent with House. And then gone.

But he can't hold himself together if he thinks too long about these things.

Park was the first to arrive in the morning, as usual. She waved to him before making herself a cup of coffee. Adams comes in next, and then Taub, and soon they're all just hanging out around the conference table, three smart doctors with nothing to do. It had been a week of doing sudoku, playing video games, and extra clinic hours.

Chase decided it was time he put in an appearance.

"Morning."

He got a collective grunt in response.

"Still nothing?" Taub asked.

"Yep."

"Damn."

"You're free."

"I drove all the way out here for nothing?"

Chase ignored his last protest and turned to Park. "It's Wednesday."

"What? Crap. Hold on." She searched her impressive brain for a moment, and though the coffee had yet to kick in, she found what she was looking for. "The first rubber heel for shoes was patented in January of 1899."

Fun Fact Wednesdays had started even before House was killed, before Chase thought he had left PPTH for good. Somehow they fell back into the routine. He liked that, another constant to rely on. He couldn't possibly fathom how Park seemed to come up with this useless information on the spot, but he didn't question it.

Chase smiled, as he always did on Wednesdays.

The meeting drifted apart after that. Taub went home to his daughters. Park and Adams headed to the clinic, and Chase had a meeting with Foreman to see if he could snag any tough patients from Princeton General or Mercy.

He was unsuccessful.

m m m

Park looked down at the teenager's bare thigh with her dark eyebrows raised.

"How did this happen again?" She asked, slapping on a pair of gloves.

The boy was about fifteen, with a mane of red hair framing his face. He sat on the edge of the examining table in his boxers, having dropped trow to expose thirteen push pins firmly imbedded in his thigh. "I dunno. Just fucking around with some guys I know."

Park flicked one of them with her finger, and the boy flinched. She dug around in a nearby drawer for some forceps. "Well, there's not a whole lot of options. I'll try to be quick. I think a local anesthetic isn't even needed, really."

"You're saying it's gonna hurt?"

"Not too bad. We'll try one and see. You may want to close you eyes."

She picked one a random. It was blue, and shaped in a way that the forceps could easily grip. Without bothering to ask if he was ready, she plucked it out suddenly. It came out easily.

He winced, but didn't say a word.

"No problem." She said with a chipper smile, showing her dimples, as he opened his eyes. A tiny droplet of blood formed in the hole, which she wiped away with a square of gauze. They proceeded with the other twelve in the same way. By the end, he was comfortable enough to actually open his eyes and watch her do it.

She put band aids on the more persistently bleeding marks, but most were fine without. The boy left without so much as a limp. She had to say, House may have hated the clinic, but it was occasionally interesting.

She thought about House as she peeled off her gloves and re washed her hands. She'd known him for a year. As she'd said at his funeral, he'd hired her when no one else would. But if there was one thing Chi Park was, it was adaptable. She'd worked for Andrews, then House, and now Chase. She did her job, and tried to keep emotions out of it. She was there for Chase because he needed a second in command, someone to remind him that he could still be a good doctor without House watching his every move. He needed someone to lean on who wouldn't collapse under their own stress. She could do that, and so she became a pillar.

She looked at her watch. Lunch time. And she had a date, of sorts.

m m m

They eyed the ratty chair, one with disdain, the other with nostalgia.

Park had closed the curtains and procured a metal letter opener from everyone in the building who had one. She'd then carefully labeled each with a piece of tape that had the name of the doctor she'd borrowed it from written in sharpie. Chase had wheeled the old chair into the center of the office, and was staring at it without emotion. It was House's, or had been.

Last week, Foreman had informed him that they were replacing all the furniture so it matched. It seemed trivial in Chase's opinion. As if anyone in the hospital cared if the furniture was the same in each department. But it was Foreman's way of coping, he figured, getting rid of the things that seemed to yell memories at him. Chase understood, but couldn't quite let House's desk chair be thrown into some dump without leaving a personal touch of his own. He'd told Park this; Park had hatched a plan, as was her nature.

"You ready?" She asked, with unrestrained excitement. Throwing knife like objects at upholstery was the most fun you could have with your pants on, she believed. It reminded her of when she was eleven, and her brother was seven, and she used to get him to play a game where he tried to climb that stairs on all fours while she threw random shit at him. It never failed to amuse her, and occasionally she had the urge to do it again, even at an older age. Unfortunately, her brother had gotten slightly more clever as the years passed.

Chase nodded after a long moment.

She had sixteen letter openers lined up on his desk. She passed him the first one in the row.

He aimed carefully, holding the 'blade' between his fingers, before letting it fly, and then sink deep into the center of the chair. An involuntary smile curled the corners of his mouth.

"This was genius." He told Park.

"I know." She said simply, throwing her own. House would've approved of the proper send off of his chair, she was sure.

Before long, there are sixteen letter openers impaled in a desk chair, and Chase is looking at Park's dimpled, self satisfied smile.

**Author's Note: Thanks to everyone who's reviewed! You guys are awesome! I'll try to have the next chapter up soon.**


	3. Drinking Games

Chase had a triumphant spring in his walk as he entered the conference room on Thursday, but was quickly distracted from his victory by the TV.

Park sat on the couch next to Taub, pouring shots vodka into twin glasses. They appeared to be watching the Discovery Channel, specifically Bear Grylls on Man vs. Wild. Occasionally, Grylls would say something, and the two doctors would cheer and elatedly throw back their drinks. It was ten in the morning.

Adams was watching incredulously from one corner of the room, and Chase approached her.

"What the hell's going on?" he asked.

"I'm not entirely sure." Adams replied, not taking her eyes off the scene before them.

He looked at the tall woman closely for a second. "Did you stay here all night?"

Her brow furrowed. "Yes." She said after a moment. "They needed an extra hand in the ER. How'd you know?"

He replied without hesitation. "You're wearing the same blouse and your make up looks a day old." It was only once the words were out of his mouth that he realized how cruel they were.

She gave him a look and breathed "House" before leaving his side.

Chase froze. Compared to House. And not in a good way.

"We take a shot whenever he says something along the lines of 'this could kill you in seconds' or 'I could die at any moment while doing this' even though he's gotta camera crew eating Cheetos right next to him." Park explained, oblivious to the exchange. "Also if eats anything disgusting."

"I like how you told our boss that without a second thought." Taub said.

"Like it wasn't obvious." Park retorted.

"Anyway," Chase continued. "We have a case, so get over here."

Park and Taub took one last drink before pausing the TV, just as a weather alert about a new hurricane heading up the coast came on. They met the others around the conference table.

"Assuming you're not too wasted to work." Chase said, handing out files.

"Nah, we were only twenty minutes into the episode." Taub dismissed. "Only about four shots."

Park nodded in agreement.

m m m

The case was solved quickly. Too quickly.

How had House managed to do it? Chase thought. Never under his rule had they gone this long without a really puzzling patient. It wore on him, sometimes, how large the shoes he had to fill were. Perhaps too large.

And then there was Adams' comment, which confused him further. He wanted House's skill at diagnostics. He was starting to realize that may come with a price. That maybe trying to fill House's shoes was effecting his psyche. He was generally considered not a complete douche bag. And yet he couldn't figure why he'd just said that to her without a second thought.

"You seem distracted." Park said from across his desk, putting down the papers she was going through.

"Hmm." He turned his eyes from the ceiling back down to the pile of paperwork they were staying late to get through. "Do you think I act like House?"

"Sometimes." She responded without waiting a beat. "You're nicer than him. Not so arrogant. But you notice things he would. Not everything, but most things."

That was the thing he needed in Park. Her honesty. She had been the one to call in May, and tell him what had happened to House. That Foreman would be offering the job any day now. She had put it simply, giving any details he asked for. House was dead. He'd been killed in a fire. Nobody knew how he got in it. The funeral was on Tuesday. She didn't cry (Park never cried, he was sure) or try to comfort him. That's not what he needed. He didn't need someone to hold his hand and tell him everything was gonna be okay, at least, not at work. He needed someone who was gonna tell him to man up and do his job.

Once they'd hung up, he'd sat down on his couch, even though he was already late for an interview, and put his head in his hands. For the first few moments he was in shock, and then came the lump in his throat as it dawned on him. House was gone. The world must be coming to an end, because the mightiest asshole of them all had fallen.

"But we're all a little like House, I suppose." She continued. "We're weird. That's why he chose us. We're not destined to become him. We're destined to learn from his mistakes." Park rose to her feet, handing him a document. "I need your signature on this."

"Park," he said, with what might have been a slow smile creeping onto his face. "You're weird."

She smiled hesitantly at him. "Also, I'm getting coffee."

"Get me some too." He called after her. She gave a non committal grunt. Park wasn't mush of a night owl, and they were pushing midnight with this paperwork. As usual, he owed her.

He pulled one of the bottom desk drawers to retrieve a pen as he thought over her words. She sometimes spouted wisdom at the most unexpected times. She had become his confidant, really, his closest friend.

House had always kept pens in the same drawer as he kept his employee's contracts. Recently, they'd all been revisited, seeing as they all had a new employer. Chase under Foreman, Adams, Taub and Park under Chase. Though in this department, they hardly observed rank.

He paused for a moment before closing the drawer. Something caught his eye.

Last month, when he'd been redoing the contracts, he'd done Adams's last. She would've been on top of the stack. But looking in their now, he saw his own file peering up at him from the top. His memory must have been failing him, was the only was he could rationalize this incident.

He picked up his file anyway, as thought it may jog his memory through touch. He realized that it wasn't even his current contract—it was dated 2003, and had House's signature in the bottom right corner. He was sure he's put this in the pile to be shredded. It was useless, now, completely void.

The light from the hallway lit up the paper, making it translucent. That's when he saw the hand written letters, spelled out on the back.

"What the hell?" He muttered.

Written simply in black ink, in a familiar handwriting that used only capital letters, were two words:

EVERYBODY LIES.

It took a moment for his brain to make the connection. And then it clicked.

It wasn't a guarantee. No, House could have written this at any time in the last ten years. But how could it have miraculously surfaced now, just by coincidence that his old contract should appear in his desk drawer?

If House was still alive, then he didn't want to be found. In fact, since Wilson was on leave for the remainder of his life, they were probably together. Which meant no one could believe that House wasn't dead. He wondered for a moment if House had left hints for any of his other long term colleagues, like Cuddy, wherever she may be, or Foreman, or maybe even Cameron. He toyed with the idea that maybe he was the only one House trusted, though it seemed unlikely. He wouldn't know if the others found anything, they would never tell either. That was okay, Chase could keep a secret. It didn't matter actually. If he'd told anyone, they'd probably think he was nuts anyway. And it didn't change much either. Whether House was dead or not, he was still gone. And Chase still had to take his place.

Chase folded the contract into a roughly two by three inch square, and then unclipped his ID badge. He carefully slipped the contract into the plastic casing, behind his name and picture so no one else could see. This way, he could carry around House's last message. It seemed corny, but it couldn't hurt.

Park returned, handing him a cup of coffee. She noticed he seemed to be in a better mood. He wondered if she could keep a secret, and then decided against it. Not yet, at least. Park was good at many things. Keeping secrets was not one of them.

"Hear about the storm moving in tonight?" She asked, picking up where she had left off.

"Uh, yeah." He said, skimming a document. "Just missing New Jersey, right? Going to hit the New York and Massachusetts." It was early August, right in hurricane season, but it was not something the inhabitants of the northeast U.S. spent a lot of time worrying about.

Park nodded. "Hurricane Marguerite. Hit the Carolinas pretty hard but they say she'll down size before she makes landfall. I think she's a category four right now."

"Damn."

"That's what I said."

They continued into the wee hours of the morning. House had never been one for filling out paperwork on time, but Chase was tired of having piles of shit on his desk. Park didn't mind staying.

"Have you ever been skydiving?" She asked, seemingly out of the blue, blinking sleep out of her eyes. Outside, it had started to pour, Marguerite's winds lashing against the windows.

"No, I haven't." Chase replied, taking a long sip of coffee.

"Do you want to?"

"I hadn't really thought about it."

"It seems cool, don't ya think? But scary as hell."

"I suppose."

"It's on my bucket list."

"That's a good place for it."

Park was trying to keep herself awake, and her ability to talk about nothing was helping in her efforts. Even so, Chase nodded off around six in the morning, and Park couldn't bring herself to keep going. She put down the file she was working on, and looked at him for a moment, asleep in his new office chair.

"You're not House." She said, very quietly. "You know how to care."

After a moment, she rose from her chair, and headed into the adjoining conference to curl up on the couch.

**Author's note: Thanks to everyone who's reviewed or favorited. I shall update soon!**


	4. Caught Off Guard

Chase was jolted awake by a blurry figure, who had features remarkably similar to Foreman's.

He blinks his eyes once, and the Dean of Medicine came into focus. Park was standing behind him, rubbing her eyes. Chase rolled his stiff neck, and his brow furrowed.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"We have a problem." Foreman replied. Chase saw Park bite her lip, a nervous habit usually in place when watching the season finales of her favorite shows.

"Remember the hurricane everyone predicted would be nothing by the time it his landfall?" Foreman continued.

"Hurricane Marguerite?"

"Well, the meteorologists were wrong. It's raging along the New York islands as we speak, and it's still a category four. It'll hit Rhode Island and Cape Cod before noon. The hospitals up there are already overflowing. Nobody was prepared for this."

Chase looked at his watch. It was 9:30 am.

"Christ," he muttered.

"Yeah. You, Park and every other doctor we can find are manning the ER and ICU until further notice, which at this rate, may be a while." Foreman hurried off soon after that, in anticipation of a very stressful few days ahead of him.

Chase climbed to his feet and turned to Park. "How bad is it so far?"

"Very. One of the strongest storms in recorded history to make it up the coast this far. New York is overwhelmed. People thought it would just be a rain storm. They were out on the beach, in their backyards. Countless injuries. Already confirmed deaths in the hundreds. Knocked out power in New Jersey too. We're running on a generator at the moment."

Chase peeked into the conference room. The TV was turned onto the news, which of course was covering the storm. The reception was going in and out.

"Anything from Taub and Adams?"

"Nothing that I know of. But NJ wasn't hit too bad."

For the first time, Chase noticed the rain beating against the window, harder than it had been when he'd fallen asleep hours earlier. He could hear the howl of the wind outside.

It seemed so unlikely that this could happen, he thought, in this day and age. How people could be caught so off guard by something so big and so powerful. He thought of Katrina, of how people at least had a few days of advanced warning. This was so different. This was heading toward catastrophe.

"We gotta get down to the ER." Park said from behind him, and he realized he'd been standing at the window for a good minute, looking at Marguerite but not seeing her.

"Right." He grabbed his white coat, and his now slightly heavier ID badge, before following Park at her scurrying pace down the hall.

m m m

The head of emergency medicine at Princeton-Plainsboro was Janet Chia, a pulmonologist and surgeon. She was an elegant Asian woman with black hair and kind features, who was comforting, confident and authoritative all rolled into one.

When Chase had first started working for House, he had taken a liking to Chia, as any male would, despite a slight age difference. In an attempt to woo her, he'd made an ass of himself, which pretty much shaped her opinion of him from then on. Even now, she looked at him with a certain pity in her dark eyes, making him feel like a young boy who had acted up in class. He'd like to think he had matured a bit since his first years at PPTH, though he still had a habit of sleeping with nurses. Or used to. Lately, work had taken precedence over sex with strangers.

Chia directed them to the incoming onslaught of patients, and told them to use as little space and time as possible. That morning he straight was pulled back in a quick pony tail and a fine sheen of sweat covered the bridge of her nose and hairline. Around them, the flurry of activity was nothing like he'd ever seen, even in such a bustling place as the ER. Doctors yelled back and forth across stretchers and make shift beds, while orderlies and nurses constantly restocked cabinets and wiped down surfaces for the next patient.

And the patients themselves had chaotic injuries. Bloody wounds inflicted by flying debris, limbs disfigured by the same, all soaked to the skin by the relentless rain. And they just kept coming. Transported by ambulance from the exhausted New York hospitals, jam packed and overflowing. But at this rate, Princeton-Plainsboro would end up the same way.

He lost Park quickly in the crush of patients as she was swished away to the most serious. The same happened to Chase, finally fully awake as he treated a gaping head wound.

m m m

Seven hours later, Park snipped the end off a line of stitches and let the nurses lead her patient away, only to be confronted with a new injury seconds later.

They were running out of space. Not enough beds, so they were starting to utilize every extra couch and chair for the less serious wounds. They were running low on supplies, too, and the staff were dipping into the emergency stock rooms the hospital kept.

Park wasn't thinking about that, though. Her mind was entirely focused on the task at hand, not thinking backward ahead, but just on what she was doing on the patient at that very moment. She hadn't eaten or sat down in hours

A boy came in on a stretcher. He appeared to be about nine, and his head was bandaged. His mother followed the paramedics carrying his makeshift bed, looking scared and helpless, a look Park had seen on many mothers' faces.

A nurse told the woman where she could wait while Park went to work, peeling off the blood stained bandages and inspecting the wound. The child was no doubt concussed, but the more pressing issue was the giant laceration stretching across his scalp, still bleeding. The boy was pale, he seemed to have lost a lot of blood already, and was barely conscious.

She injected lidocaine into the injury, and then searched it for foreign objects. She then cleansed it with a saline solution, and pulled the skin forward until the edges met and she stapled them together. To finish, she was putting a piece of tape over the now sealed cut, when things started to go wrong.

The boy began to seize unexpectedly, his torso arching toward the tiled ceiling, his eyes rolling back in his head. Obviously, the damage to his brain was more than she had seen. The concussion was severe. She needed a surgeon.

She looked around frantically, and found who she was looking for.

"Chase!" She cried. "I need you!"

He was in between patients, by some miracle, and rushed over to her just as some nurses pushed the boy into the hopefully prepped OR.

Park and Chase sterilized, pulling on robes and masks, and covering their hair. Without a moment to waste, they pushed through the swinging doors, hands raised above their heads, before pulling on blue plastic gloves. The nurses moved onto another patient, leaving Park to assist Chase the best she could.

The boy had been moved onto the metal table, centrally placed in the room. The bright fluorescent had been adjusted so it was pointed at it his head, and he had been anesthetized. Tools had been laid out on a cart in easy reach of Chase's right hand.

"Alright." Said Chase, after Park had briefed him on the situation. He ran the clippers over the boy's brown hair, a quick, messy, shave. He then picked up a scalpel, peeling the scalp back a few moments later. Park kept it out of the way with one hand as he picked up the bone drill and began to drill evenly spaced holes in the back of the boy's skull. The brain was in sight when, yet again, things didn't go as planned.

Something happened. Neither Chase nor Park had time to wonder what triggered it, but the boy's vitals immediately dropped into the critical zone without warning.

Chase swore, and dropped the drill, turning his attention to the monitors. An OR nurse heard the alarm and entered the room, pulling a defibrillator cart behind her. She handed the paddles to Park, the nearest to the door.

"Charging." Park cried. "Clear!"

Nothing.

"Charging. Clear!"

Nothing.

She tried three times more, to no avail. By the end, her voice was a shaky rasp as she called out the standard warning. Chase called it before she tried again, very gently taking the paddles from her clenched fists and placing them back on the cart. He somberly thanked the nurse, who nodded. He then noted the time and pulled the lightweight blue sheet up over the boy's face.

Park hadn't moved. Her face was expressionless, her small fist still clenched tightly at her sides.

"We've gotta tell his mother." She said quietly. They didn't have time to fuck around. Not today.

"We do indeed." Chase replied, equally shaken. But he had experience with children passing away, at least, more than the younger Park did. "Jesus."

She took a deep breath. For once, she was the one needing reassurance that she was doing her job well.

"It's gonna suck," Chase told her. "but you'll get through it."

They both spent several of the last few hours pulling sheets up on patients, but children were always a different story.

Chase reached out and squeezed her hand, for just a second. "Come on."

**Author's Note: Sorry it took me a few days to get this up. I've had a ridiculous amount of work, but I'll update soon. Thanks to all reviewers, alerters, and favoriters! **


	5. Change

_28 hours later:_

Adams rubbed sleep from her eyes as she swerved to avoid yet another ambulance.

The rain was still pouring down, but that was all of Marguerite that seemed to be effecting New Jersey. The ambulances were all coming from the direction of New York and Boston, or at least that's what she'd inferred from what Foreman had told her.

She'd fallen asleep the minute she made it back to her house the night before the hurricane struck, and then neglected to check her phone when she got up the next morning. She'd forgotten it at home as she went to go visit her mother, oblivious to the destruction farther north. She'd returned home at ten in the evening to find 8 missed calls from Foreman. It had taken her hours to fight her way through the traffic in the direction of Princeton-Plainsboro.

Evacuations were under way in full force. People were getting the fuck out the northeast, and not in an orderly fashion. It was not a hurricane prone area. The proportion of population to evacuation plans in effect was criminally off. Nobody thought it was an issue. The damage and loss of life was already huge.

She had to show her hospital ID several times to get through police barricades telling her that she needed to turn back and evacuate, because she had to drive northward to get from her house in the suburbs back to Princeton. But she finally turned into the PPTH parking lot, locked her car and hurried through the rain to the building. She was already soaked by the time she jogged through the front doors.

Taub greeted her at the door, hurrying across the room in the direction if the ER.

"Adams, thank God."

"Sorry I'm so late." She said.

"No problem. It's hell out there, isn't it?"

m m m

"Here, I found some tea in the neurology lounge."

Park approached him in running shorts and a t-shirt, a mug in each hand. Chase took one thankfully, and looked around the conference room with concern. After thirty six hours of straight crisis, they were getting a four hour break to sleep and bring up their blood sugar. Then they'd be back to work, as the patients just kept coming. They'd been allowed to change from the sweaty and blood stained clothes, and into whatever spares they kept in their lockers.

He glanced at Park's legs for a moment, seeing more skin than he was used to. He quickly looked away then, realizing he was starting to stare. He'd seen a lot of woman's legs. Park's were not bad looking.

Park took no notice of his glance, and curled up on one end of the conference room couch, pulling her white coat over her legs and utilizing a few nearby pillows. Chase did the same on the other end of the sofa.

"I'm going to move out of my parents' house." She said after a moment, in her usual out of the blue fashion.

"That's great." Chase said genuinely, doing his best to hear the rest of the conversation.

"It took some convincing, but my parents aren't freaking out anymore. I have a pretty tight budget, but I think I'll be able to find something. The privacy will be worth it." She paused. "Will you go apartment hunting with me?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Sure."

"I trust you. Figured you have more experience then me."

"Yeah, no problem."

"Cool." She put down her mug and arranged herself so she was lying down.

It was funny, Chase thought, how things were starting to change. He still owed Park a lot. She carried him through these last few months after House had gone. When he needed someone to talk to, to rely on. Tell him he wasn't fucking everything up. She might have been the only one that was solid, the only one unchanged, at least on the outside, by the trauma of House's death. House had meant a lot to her of course, but his death didn't change her life, the way it had Chase's. That's why she could support him so well, keep him focused, and make him laugh. She was a steadying force.

At times, Park had reminded him of his little sister, when she was still little. Except, unlike his relationship with his sister, park had been the one taking care of him.

But at the moment, she needed him. It was refreshing. He liked it. They were relying on eachother, rather than it being one sided. Interesting.

He was starting to nod off, thinking off how odd it was that sometimes people's personalities made them more attractive, when Park spoke again.

"Do you think we'll get an autopsy on that boy?"

"Huh? Oh, uh, not any time soon, if at all." Chase replied. "Assuming the parents don't just turn us down, which would be understandable, we don't have the time, energy, or supplies to go poking around in a dead guy's brain. At least not for a while."

"You're right." She sighed. "I just wanna know if it was something we did, if it was preventable."

"You can't beat yourself up over this. Sometimes you're just not gonna know. That sounds stupid, coming from a diagnostician, but shit happens."

She grunted, and faded off to sleep not too long after that.

m m m

At some point, between patients, Chase looked over to see Park in a swarm of doctors surrounding two metal stretchers, caught in a flurry of scalpels, needles, and plastic instruments. Incoherent yelling, to anyone who didn't know the medical jargon, was a constant background noise.

It's all over fairly quickly. The two patients were brother and sister, teenagers. The girl was fine, or would be, but the boy couldn't be saved. Park wasn't the one that pulls up the sheet.

Solomon was the one that called it on the boy. He's the new head of the Oncology Department, and was the protege of Wilson for several years. He was a few years younger than Chase, and apparently a medical prodigy. Chase didn't know him very well. Solomon had brown hair and dark eyes, and was of average height.

As they dragged off the beds, Park fell back, and Chase noticed the was clutching her left hand in her right, her tightened.

"Park," he called from across the room, "You alright?"

"Yeah," She said without thinking, then paused. "Well, actually, no...not really."

He glided over to her. "What's the problem."

She unclasped her right hand to show him the damage. Her left pinky and ring finger were crooked and bleeding, the nails broken down the middle.

"Got smashed between the stretchers." She muttered. "Pretty stupid."

Chase shrugged. "Want me to set 'em for you?"

"Sure."

He looked around for some gauze and something to be used as a splint. He then lead her to a place where she could sit down, and gently felt up the broken finger bones while she winced.

"Sorry," he muttered. "This is gonna hurt."

She sighed. "I know."

He didn't give her any warning, but simply yanked them both back into a mostly straight position. They didn't have time for exactness—they sure as hell didn't have time for an x-ray, but he got them mostly straight, and they weren't so bad that they wouldn't heal fine anyway.

There was only a little bit of blood as he laid a splint up against each finger and tied the gauze firmly around it.

"Those nails are gonna come off soon." He told her.

"Yep," She agreed. "but no rush. Good thing I'm not a surgeon."

They moved back to work then, the hospital still overwhelmed with patients. After their four hour nap, they'd been hurled straight back into the fray with no indication of another break anytime soon. Their didn't seem to be any ebb in the flow of wounded, though every doctor was worked to the bone. It reminded Chase of the tell tale thirty-six hour shifts of his residency.

And they worked their asses off. They lost track of time, because it was discouraging how long they'd been going without food or sleep or nourishment of any kind. The news was running on one of the TVs in the background, so they were kept up to date.

The storm had finally passed, thought the sky was still clouded over. Marguerite had left a trail of destruction like no one had ever seen. The pictures were gruesome—houses flattened, roads underwater, bodies covered by sheets. Cities unrecognizable. The storm itself may be over, but the aftermath would be remembered for years. They were already projecting cost estimates for what it would take to clean up New York and Boston. The dead were in the hundreds, nearly thousands, and the missing person rate just kept climbing.

It was seventy two hours before things started to get sorted out. The flow of patients became less and less, and more people were well enough to be discharged. The chaos was lessening, the frantic rate at which things had been running at for the last few days was slowing to an exhausted walk.

Park was ready to drop dead by the time Foreman came around to relieve her and Chase. They walked back to the locker room together.

"Do you think things will be back to normal?" He said, barely coherent in his half dead state. They walked slowly, each lift of a leg unbearable. Park's fingers ached, and she was close to falling asleep as she walked.

"No, but they're getting better, I think." She replied. "It'll take time. We're still pretty much up shit creek. But, honestly, I'm just worried about making it home tonight without passing out at the wheel."

"But you think everything'll be okay, eventually, right?" And for some reason, he really needed her to say yes at that moment.

She hesitated. "Yeah, I think so."

And for once, he was very glad to have the softer version of Park's support. She was the perfect passage, it seemed.

She took his larger hand in hers as they walked, and he relished the touch.

They met Taub and Adams in the locker room, along with Chia, Solomon, and Maggie Alley, a neurosurgeon that Chase knew pretty well. She had dark skin and dark hair, and was in her mid twenties. They were good team in the OR, though he didn't know her personally.

Park casually invited them all to get a wake up drink at a nearby bar as they pulled out their coats and bags. Most of them passed on her offer out of sheer exhaustion, though they were kind about it, except Chase and Adams, who figured at pick me up might not be the worst thing in the world.

The three of them took separate cars, met up inside the dimly lit pub. The news was running a constant stream of depressing images and statistics, and they were some of the few customers coming in at the late hour.

They barely had the energy for small talk as they ordered drinks. Park got the strongest drink she could stomach.

They talked quietly of what had happened over the last few days, while trying not to think about the bodies lying in the Princeton-Plainsboro morgue.

Adams was the first to leave. As she walked off stiffly, Chase reflected silently. He didn't think she'd stick around much longer. She was a good doctor, and a good person to have around, but she had come for House. And in his absence, Chase could sense her restlessness. The others had adapted, but she couldn't let things change. It wasn't her nature, he'd realized.

Park closed her eyes, a slight smile gracing her lips as a "Space Oddity" came on over the radio. She liked David Bowie. A lot. Chase knew that. They fell into a comfortable silence, simply enjoying the company of another human being. A moment of peace.

After a while, she stood to leave. She bid him farewell quietly, and he felt her drift off into the night, taking a piece of him with her.

He thought about himself. How much had changed in the ten years he knew House. He was a different man. Perhaps a better man, it was hard to tell. His view had changed, and he figured House was responsible for that. He didn't always see the bright side of things anymore. He wasn't always looking to have fun. In some ways, this gradually found realism was good. In others, he needed Park to remind him that the world wasn't as dark as he thought.

House had broken him, and fixed him, and then broken him again. He had been the rock of his life, through dead patients, and Dibala, and his divorce. Through everything, he could count on House to be an asshole, and a father figure, all at the same time. He was this Chase today because of House, and he knew it.

And in a way, Park had changed him just as much, becoming his rock in a time of personal crisis and taking on House's role, in the same way Chase himself had, as the new head of the department. She made him realize how normal was overrated, that sex with strangers was not what he wanted out of life. That he was looking for partners in the wrong kinds of people. She'd made him happier than he could imagine in a really dark time in his life. She'd told him everything would be okay.

All this went through his head in seconds. He slammed down a few bills on the bar, grabbing his coat and running out into the night. He paused outside the pub doors, scanning the parking lot for a head of black hair.

Park was unlocking her car, fifty feet to his left. His tired legs screamed at him as he broke into a sprint, catching her arm before she climbed into the driver's seat. Her head spun around to look at him, alarmed, then relaxed when she recognized him. Neither said anything. She read into the intensity in his body language, and was hardly surprised by his next action.

He leaned down, and pressed her lips to his without hesitation, without restraint. She reciprocated immediately, wrapping her arms around his neck, despite the height difference. She slipped his around her waist.

And, in that moment, they forgot about their tired bodies, and the horror of death, and the destruction of Marguerite, and for once thought only of themselves.

**Author's note: Not quite the end yet, probably one or two more chapters at the most. Thanks to everyone who reads this!**


	6. Named

_3 Weeks Later:_

Park's back ached as she bent down to pull another weed from the hot soil.

The late August sun beat down on her parent's garden, which she and her brother had been enlisted to weed on her day off. It was nine in the morning, and she was sweating through shorts and a tank top already.

The weather seemed to have forgotten about the ravage of Marguerite. Everyday since she'd left the sun had been relentless. This was good for the rebuilding efforts above New Jersey, and some of the flood water had been evaporated. The hospital had finally calmed down to a normal pace, and Park's schedule had gone back to something that remembered normalcy.

Somewhere to her left, her brother, Paeng, grunted as he lifted a heavy route system from the seemingly soft dirt. He was an engineering student at Princeton, and despite his studies he'd been drafted in the same way Park had. Neither were much for physical activity.

A door opened a few feet behind them. Their mother was hanging out the back door, a cell phone om hand.

"Chi!" She called. "Your phone's ringing!"

Park looked up, wiped sweat from her brow, and then tromped through piles of disfigured weeds toward the back steps. She took the phone from her mother, and followed her into the cool darkness of the house.

"Chi Park," She said into the receiving end.

Before the conversation had ended, she had said yes twice, and then thanked the stranger quietly. She had barely hung up before she was dialing another, more familiar number.

m m m

Robert Chase was at a staff meeting that same morning, in an elegantly furnished conference room. To his right was Will Solomon, head of oncology. To his left, Maggie Alley, head of surgery. Across from him was Janet Chia, head of emergency medicine. And the table was interspersed with people of similar titles, some he knew, some he didn't.

He was finally getting used to these department head meetings. He figured that put him a step ahead of House, who'd never bothered to go to these. Not under Cuddy, and not under Foreman.

Foreman took a seat at the head of the table, and the meeting was begun.

He went over a few budget items first, involving restocking the hospital after the beating it took during Marguerite, and how the schedule and work hours were officially returning to normal. He addressed the head of ophthalmology, a short conversation Chase didn't really listen to, and then Foreman turned to Chase himself.

"You're adding someone to the pay roll, aren't you? Someone to your team?"

It was true. As Chase had predicted that night after the storm, Adams had took off less than a week later. He could see that she didn't like the way he ran the department. And so she'd taken a job in Vermont at some small town hospital with a really good track record of dealing with Lyme disease and open heart surgery.

Yesterday, he'd met with two possible candidates in separate interviews, Eve Dawson, a dermatologist, and Landon Hallison, a nephrologist. Two specialists with impressive resumes. He would hire at least one of them, because less than four people in diagnostics was just not enough. Not enough trained minds on the patient. Hiring them both might push it, because five people was about as high as the department could go. Too many ideas would it make it impossible to narrow anything down.

He was opening his mouth to confirm Foreman's question, when he felt his phone vibrate in his breast pocket. He glanced at the caller ID. He excused himself to the hallway, with a few dirty looks in his direction.

In the mostly empty hallway, he pressed talk.

Park's voice greeted him.

"What's going on?" He asked with concern.

"I got a call from a lawyer." She said. "House's lawyer. I've been named in his will."

"Really?"

"Yeah. And the reading's today. Will you come with me?"

"Sure, of course." They'd sent their patient home the day before, and he didn't have much planned for the afternoon. "When shall I pick you up?"

m m m

Park dressed formally, in black pants and a blouse, after showering and pulling a comb through her hair. She was putting on light eye make-up when she heard Chase pull up.

Before the phone call from the lawyer, she hadn't expected to see Chase until later that evening, when she was coming over to his home. The next morning he had planned to take the morning off and go see an apartment with her. He had kept his promise, and her parents hadn't changed their mind about letting her move out. So she was getting her own apartment, a fact she was both excited and scared shitless by.

She told her parents where she was going, and she brushed off their offers to accompany her. She met Chase in the driveway, standing on tiptoes for a quick kiss on the lips.

He waved to her parents, who were looking on skeptically from the front window.

"Like we're teenagers again." He said with a grin.

"Not for long." She replied. "You seem chipper."

He shrugged. "Mostly just nervous, I think. Just hoping he didn't leave you a dead animal in a shoe box or something."

Chase got quieter and quieter as they drove toward the lawyer's office in Newark. House continued to be a touchy subject for him, as Park had suspected.

An hour later, the parked on the street and walked toward a tall office building. Chase recognized House's mother and her husband entering the same building, and waved to her. She gave a thin smile and returned the gesture half heartedly.

He saw from her distance, but he would know her anywhere. He knew her walk without a doubt, the firm set of her lips when she had somewhere to be. As she continued down the sidewalk, she came into focus. Blonde hair trailing down her back, but pulled away from her face with barrettes, make-up done minimally and subtly. Dressed formally in gray pants and matching vest fitting close to her slight figure. He'd last seen her at House's funeral, an awkward and mostly silent reunion. He shouldn't have been so surprised that she was here, but he had stopped in his tracks in shock.

Allison Cameron, all the way from Chicago, entered the building just before him without seeing him.

Park either didn't see her or didn't recognize her yet. She looked at him with confusion as he stood stalk still, staring at where his ex wife had just walked. He suddenly very much regretted coming today.

Park didn't say anything, but quietly linked arms with him, and nudged him forward out of his stupor. The feeling passed as quickly as it had come; despite Cameron's arrival, this was where he was supposed to be.

m m m

As it turned out, there were only five of them, and only three actually named in the will.

Chase was actually wondering why Cameron was the only one House had left anything to. Maybe he had already gotten what House had left for him—the note on the back of his old PPTH contract. Maybe he left something similar or otherwise meaningful for Foreman. All the members of the old team.

He'd managed to find a few words with Cameron before they's all been seated in the lawyer's office. He'd introduced her to Park first.

"_You came all the way out here for this?" _He'd asked her.

"_I'm sure it'll be worth the flight."_ She'd replied, with a slight smile.

It bothered him sometimes how well she'd moved on after their divorce. She'd found a husband, had a kid, gotten a good job. He'd spent so much time just floating, miserable and not willing to admit it, working for House as if no time had passed. It was getting better now, he thought, with a new position at work. And Park. Things were no longer stagnant. His scars were healing. At least, the ones she caused.

The lawyer was a tall, red haired fellow, skinny and lean. He smiled with sympathy at the gathered people.

"Greg House mailed his will to me a few days before he died. I only met him a few times. Usually he dealt with his legal troubles through the hospital. Not much I could do, toward the end. I hope this'll make up for that."

No one said anything, so he cleared his throat and began to read off a piece of paper from a file on his desk. It was short, and to the point, in true House style.

He left his mother all items in his apartment that were not furniture, to be kept or auctioned off. He left Cameron a manila enveloped, which Chase assumed had something in it. He would later be told that it was her file from her time at Princeton-Plainsboro, compiled by House himself. It was detailed, with obvious care put into it.

Chase remembered a time when Cameron worried that House didn't like her. How her only condition for coming back to the diagnostics department all those years ago was that House would go on one date with her. Maybe Chase had had a hard time getting over her, but maybe she'd had an even harder time getting over House. Now, she knew he at least cared a little bit. He wondered if that was a good thing or a bad thing for her attempts to forget.

House left half his money to Dominika Petrova, and half to James Wilson, who was apparently still alive somewhere.

Park was named last, he held out a hand for her to squeeze in anticipation, which she took gratefully.

When the lawyer had finished, and the others were starting to leave, Park was still sitting in her chair, staring straight ahead in confusion and some sort of stunned silence. It didn't make sense. How could he have known...?

"Come on," Chase helped her to her feet, equally stunned, but still able to move.

Blythe was going over to check it out, they probably should, too. Made sense, if she didn't think about it too hard. About where they were actually going, and why.

Chase bid a quiet good bye to Cameron, who was heading back to Chicago that same afternoon, and herded Park into the passenger seat of his car. They drove back to Princeton, following Blythe in the car ahead of them. Park said nothing, but leaned her forehead against the cool window. This was brilliant, she supposed, but weird.

They pulled up in front of an apartment building Park had never seen before, and turned off the engine.

m m m

House may have been a jackass every chance he got, but he knew how to decorate an apartment.

It was a beautiful space, with windows and comfy furniture and a grand piano. It was more room than she could hope for.

And Park owned it.

The deed had been transferred to her, she wouldn't have to pay rent or a mortgage. It came full of furniture and a parking space in the garage. It was in good proximity to the hospital, and the walls were thick enough that she could play guitar as loud as she wanted and no one would yell at her to go to bed.

Blythe had hired a company to take out all of House's personal possessions. She would be keeping a lot of it. Park could move in by the end of the week. She didn't have much to move, but Chase helped anyway.

It was a little weird, she thought, living in her dead boss's apartment. But it was as though he'd known she would need a place to stay. A parting gift. An uncharacteristically nice parting gift.

Chase, once over his initial shock, had smiled. Not just for Park. House had made a will. If he really was still alive, then this meant he really wasn't coming back. Maybe this was the closure he needed, to get over himself and start running his department.

It was getting on toward late evening when Park finished placing her possessions in House's drawers and cabinets. She'd stocked the refrigerator, said hello to the neighbors, changed the name on the door, and was ready to slump down on her couch, which she eventually did with a quiet glee.

Chase appeared from the kitchen, a cup of hot chocolate in each hand. He handed her a mug, and then settled into the couch beside her, putting an arm loosely around her shoulders and leaning into her. She inhaled the warmth of the apartment, the warmth of the drink in her hands, the warmth of Chase in close proximity.

"This is good," He said.

"Yeah," Park agreed. "It is."

She sighed happily then, smiling her dimpled smile.

**Author's Note: Ok, that's the end. Thanks to everyone read, reviewed, favorited, or alerted. You guys are amazing.**

**~Lafayette.**


End file.
